Re:Unnatural Keys – Nature doesn’t come with identifiers
by TRiG_Ireland on Sunday May 28, 2023 @04:10PM
(#36107308)
Diamonds and coal are both pure carbon (mostly carbon-12). So is graphite, and buckminsterfullerene, and a number of other things. Crystal structure matters a lot.
Surely such a system would have a products table with something like nominal element fk, purity, mass columns anyway. (And stock table with fk to products.)
Then nothing wrong with 'natural' key on the elements, but sure, products are the thing you've (personally) made up, so of course there's no 'someone else's' key to use.